


After

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz, The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Fictober, M/M, Soulmates, major good place spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-07-25 14:51:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16199774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: A few things that happen to Michael Mell, after he dies.(Good Place crossover ficlet)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fictober prompt 3: How can I trust you?

Michael Mell wakes up to find himself sitting on a white couch in a small, unfamiliar room. There is a brightness to the space, but no obvious source of light. The walls are white, featureless except a series of words emblazoned on them in green lettering. Michael adjusts his glasses, and reads: 

WELCOME! EVERYTHING IS FINE.

That might be the case, but Michael thinks that everything would be finer if he could call his husband, Paul. Calling Paul would be very good right now. Instinctively, Michael reaches into his pocket for his phone, and comes up empty. 

“Hello there, Michael.” 

Michael whirls around, to see an old man standing behind him, smiling benevolently in non-threatening tweed. 

“Hello?” 

The man holds up his hand. It takes Michael a minute to realize that he's waiting for a high five, which Michael hesitantly gives him. When the man lowers his hand, Michael goes in to shake it. 

“Where am I?” Michael asks. 

“You died. This is the afterlife.” 

“Oh.” Michael looks around him again. He should be panicking, and yet he can't. The air around him is warm, in a way that is fuzzy and not unpleasant. “Where's Paul?” 

“Sleeping soundly in bed.” 

“Are… like… are my moms around here somewhere?” 

“They are not.” 

“What about lola?” 

“She is also not present.” 

“Bowzer?” 

“Unfortunately, the adage that all dogs go to heaven is a myth.” 

“So, hold up, is this—”

The old man smiles, taking hold of Michael by both shoulders. “Congratulations,” he says. “You are in the good place.” 

 

——————-

Michael ends up following the old man to his office. Upon sitting down across from the man’s desk, Michael chances to look down at his hands, and gasps. 

“Do you like them?” the man asks. 

“I…” 

“We automatically adjust your corporal form to match the age when you were the happiest. As you might notice, we've shaved… oh, fifty years, give or take, off of your timeline.” 

Michael flexes his hands experimentally. Fifty years ago he would've been twenty-four. He can't believe that he was at his happiest, considering all the awful shirt that went down that year, but physically he was doing pretty good. All of the little aches and pains that Michael had gotten used to in his old age are gone, and he's not about to look that particular gift horse in the mouth. 

“So,” Michael asks, “are you, like, God or whatever?” 

The old man laughs, a big hearty laugh. “Me? God? What an idea! I'm the architect of your little neighborhood, and I'll be here to make sure that your transition is perfect. You may call me, Michael. Hey, same name!” The old man, Other Michael, gives Michael finger guns. Then, he straightens, and opens up a big book. “Now,” he says, “first thing’s first. Let's have a look at your file.”

—————-

From his file, Michael discovers that he passed away tragically from a heart attack, brought on by the excitement of beating the final level of Apocalypse of the Damned 6. He also learns that he earned his way into ~~heaven~~ the Good Place through a series of small kindnesses, and one big ass haul of virtuous human points, from that time he stopped the world from being taken over by faulty nanotechnology. 

From Other Michael, he finds out that he's in planned neighborhood, designed to fulfill his every whim and wish for all of eternity. He gets all kinds of cool stuff, like a house and a soulmate. All in all, not a bad deal. 

“Speaking of soulmates,” Other Michael says, opening the door to a big ass house, which is apparently his, “why don't you go inside and meet him? I'll give you your privacy” 

—————-

The the room that Michael enters is forking aesthetic to the max. It's sort of like a cross between the bedroom in Clarissa Explains It All, and something out of original series Star Trek. There's an orange couch with Pac-Man print in the middle of the living room, and sitting on it is somebody that Michael never expected to see again. 

“Jeremy?” 

“Hey, Michael.” 

“Don't forking ‘hey Michael’ me.” Michael makes his way over to the other man, and gathers him in a crushing hug. For a dead guy, Michael feels mega light-headed, and his heart is beating hecka fast. He rakes his hand up through Jeremy’s hair, and then buries his face in it. Apparently the dead can also cry. 

“It's fine,” Jeremy says. “They pulled some temporal shirt, so it feels like i just got here. I mean temporal _shirt_. I keep trying to say _shirt_ , but it comes out as shirt.” 

“Dude, we’re not making our first conversation in the afterlife about cosmic censorship or whatever it is.”

“Fair.” 

Michael pulls away, grasping Jeremy by the shoulders to get a good look at him. Physically, he isn't any different than the last day that Michael saw him, and it's a little unfair. So many years spent telling himself that Jeremy _wasn't_ everything, and teaching himself to keep going and find happiness in his absence, and now here he is. 

“So, you’re my soulmate,” Michael says slowly, mulling over the word, and its relation to Jeremy. 

“Looks like it,” Jeremy says. 

“Okay.” Michael lets go. He walks to the window, and leans against the sill. There's not much to look at outside, just happy couples, and sprawling perfection. 

“Aren't you happy about it?” Jeremy asks. 

“It's a lot to think about.” 

“What's there to think about? We’re dead. We’re soulmates. We get to be happy now.” 

Michael turns to face Jeremy, looks him in the eyes, and says something that he should not be able to even think about in paradise:

“How am I supposed to trust you?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings - this chapter explains Jeremy's death

Michael waits for Jeremy to freeze up. Surely he's gone too far. He waits for Jeremy to lick his lips, the way he used to when he was searching for the words to answer hard questions. 

“We’ve been best friends like our entire lives,” Jeremy says, far too quickly. “Of course you can trust me.” 

“Like _your_ entire life. You were only part of… of a third of mine, at most.” Michael rakes his hand up through his hair. “Mama was only forty-eight when she died. She’s not here, by the way, which is forked up. She lived an entire two years less than I've been living without you!” 

“Calm down,” Jeremy says. “You’re here because you’re special, Michael. We’re special. We’re special to each other. That's why we’re here together.” 

“What about your Squip?” 

“Gone! I've got a new AI companion now. Check it out. Janet!” 

There's a flicker, and a woman, in what looks like a purple flight attendant uniform, appears out of nowhere. Michael backs away, tripping backwards onto the couch. 

“Hi!” the woman says, in an overly chipper customer service voice. “I'm Janet. How may I help you?” 

“Janet knows everything in the universe,” Jeremy explains, which isn't very comforting, coming from him. His Squip ‘knew everything in the universe’ too. “And she can get you anything. Watch.” He turns to Janet. “I'd like a case of Doctor Pepper Gold, please.” 

With a smile and snap of a finger, the case of soda appears in Janet’s hands. She hands it to Jeremy, who hands it to Michael. For soda that's been discontinued since the eighties, the box is gloriously crisp and unfaded. 

“Doctor Pepper Gold is fresh, cool, and delicious,” says Janet. 

“In the Good Place the expired soda isn't expired,” Jeremy adds. 

“That's right!” says Janet. 

Michael continues to stare at the box, not daring to open it. 

“I'll ask her a question,” Jeremy continues. “Can Michael Mell trust Jeremy Heere?” 

“My sources say yes. Jeremy Heere is unlikely to repeat the same mistakes he made on earth. Barring similar cases of outside control, he would go to the ends of the universe for Michael Mell.” 

“See?” Jeremy says. “You can trust me. Do you wanna ask her something?” 

Michael shakes his head. That's a hard no. “Can she—” Michael begins to ask, and it's like he and Jeremy have reversed their usual roles. Normally Jeremy is the one who can't make coherent sentences, but this whole Janet deal is mega forked up. Michael rubs his temples, then kinda points to Janet, with a gesture like he's flinging her out the window. 

Jeremy nods, finally having the decency to look nervous. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, of course. Bye Janet.” He sits down next to Michael, and puts his hand on his shoulder. 

—————————-

Fifty years ago, Jeremy Heere died. A lot of things happened before he did. Preschool. High school. A messed up home life. A few awesome friendships. College. The Squip.

Michael had been the one to end the first of Jeremy’s many Squip incidents. He'd been there to help Jeremy through subsequent others. 

Those had been the ones where Jeremy resisted. 

College had been different. Sure, Jeremy had tried to hold back. At least, Michael liked to believe that an attempt had been made. Faced, however, with failing grades, mounting student loans, and the feeling that his future hung in the balance of every class, Jeremy had turned to the Squip again. 

At first, it was just a matter of taking a sip of Mountain Dew before tests, hiding the pain of the installation process, doing what needed to be done, and deactivating the Squip with a gulp of Red after. There’d been excuses, trips to the library that weren't really trips to the library, and other forms of subterfuge to keep Michael from knowing.

This had escalated to Jeremy activating the Squip when he needed to write major papers, and Michael finding out and making Jeremy promise to stop doing it. That kind of worked until finals, when Jeremy hadn't been able to resist the lure of an easy pass. 

“It's not a big deal,” he'd said to Michael. “It's not like it's making me block you anymore. It's not turning me into an asshole. It's just helping me, like it was supposed to in the first place.” 

The not-making-Jeremy-an-asshole thing hadn't lasted long. And it had been a big deal— a massive one. It'd been the repeated abuse to his brain, installing and uninstalling the Squip as he did, that'd caused the aneurism that’d killed Jeremy.


End file.
